.\" Copyright (c) 1989, 1990, 1993
.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
.\"
.\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by
.\" the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
.\"
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.\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
.\" are met:
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.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
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.\"    notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
.\"    documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
.\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
.\"    must display the following acknowledgement:
.\"	This product includes software developed by the University of
.\"	California, Berkeley and its contributors.
.\" 4. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors
.\"    may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
.\"    without specific prior written permission.
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.\"     @(#)cut.1	8.1 (Berkeley) 6/6/93
.\" $FreeBSD: src/usr.bin/cut/cut.1,v 1.32 2007/02/28 10:13:32 ru Exp $
.\"
.Dd December 21, 2006
.Dt CUT 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm cut
.Nd cut out selected portions of each line of a file
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm
.Fl b Ar list
.Op Fl n
.Op Ar
.Nm
.Fl c Ar list
.Op Ar
.Nm
.Fl f Ar list
.Op Fl d Ar delim
.Op Fl s
.Op Ar
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm
utility cuts out selected portions of each line (as specified by
.Ar list )
from each
.Ar file
and writes them to the standard output.
If no
.Ar file
arguments are specified, or a file argument is a single dash
.Pq Sq Fl ,
.Nm
reads from the standard input.
The items specified by
.Ar list
can be in terms of column position or in terms of fields delimited
by a special character.
Column numbering starts from 1.
.Pp
The
.Ar list
option argument
is a comma or whitespace separated set of numbers and/or
number ranges.
Number ranges consist of a number, a dash
.Pq Sq \- ,
and a second number
and select the fields or columns from the first number to the second,
inclusive.
Numbers or number ranges may be preceded by a dash, which selects all
fields or columns from 1 to the last number.
Numbers or number ranges may be followed by a dash, which selects all
fields or columns from the last number to the end of the line.
Numbers and number ranges may be repeated, overlapping, and in any order.
If a field or column is specified multiple times, it will appear only
once in the output.
It is not an error to select fields or columns not present in the
input line.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width indent
.It Fl b Ar list
The
.Ar list
specifies byte positions.
.It Fl c Ar list
The
.Ar list
specifies character positions.
.It Fl d Ar delim
Use
.Ar delim
as the field delimiter character instead of the tab character.
.It Fl f Ar list
The
.Ar list
specifies fields, separated in the input by the field delimiter character
(see the
.Fl d
option.)
Output fields are separated by a single occurrence of the field delimiter
character.
.It Fl n
Do not split multi-byte characters.
Characters will only be output if at least one byte is selected, and,
after a prefix of zero or more unselected bytes, the rest of the bytes
that form the character are selected.
.It Fl s
Suppress lines with no field delimiter characters.
Unless specified, lines with no delimiters are passed through unmodified.
.El
.Sh ENVIRONMENT
The
.Ev LANG , LC_ALL
and
.Ev LC_CTYPE
environment variables affect the execution of
.Nm
as described in
.Xr environ 7 .
.Sh EXIT STATUS
.Ex -std
.Sh EXAMPLES
Extract users' login names and shells from the system
.Xr passwd 5
file as
.Dq name:shell
pairs:
.Pp
.Dl "cut -d : -f 1,7 /etc/passwd"
.Pp
Show the names and login times of the currently logged in users:
.Pp
.Dl "who | cut -c 1-16,26-38"
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr colrm 1 ,
.Xr paste 1
.Sh STANDARDS
The
.Nm
utility conforms to
.St -p1003.2-92 .
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm
command appeared in
.Tn AT&T
System III
.Ux .
